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Friday, 23 September 2011

Big Dog

A friend at work informed me of this US DARPA funded project called Big Dog. Watch the video of this robotic dog in action:

It is made by a US company called Boston Dynamics and they have published some slides and a technical paper about the different technologies and the use of compliant materials within the robot. I'd hate to think what the R&D costs of something this advanced would be.
The Big Dog project website has links to the aforementioned presentation and technical paper.
My favourite part of the video is when they kick Big Dog on the ice and it stumbles briefly before recovering. The slow motion jumping sequence is very impressive too!